Wisdom from Gogol Bordello

On intersection of all dimensions
where I was stoppin' by just for a drink
I meet a brother from tribal connection
and together we began to sing.
"we gonna turn frustration into inspiration.
whatever demons are there,
we gonna set them free."
such is the method of tribal connection,
of our fun loving restless breed
- Gogol Bordello

I've lately felt a rising force within me. Where I've only felt ashamed of being noticed, now I
relish and bask in the state of defying the sensibilities of others.

But I fear that my mentality may turn into a form of pseudo-superiority, in which I look at every
passing person as a coward in their own skin. I do not want to become that. I want to treat every
person I pass as my brother or sister, to hold a sense of respect and love for each person I
pass...

Judgments - Human Again

A quick judgment
You would be so quick to pass, onto that man,
With liquor on his breath, and sin in his bones
Without looking to his smile,
Or the light that once shone
From his eyes when the fire was bright and first kindled,
All you see is a man begging, for cigarettes and change,
Label him deranged and move on,
If you walked his every step, or a single one,
If you knew his every thought, feeling...

Couldn't you bother to share a touch, a gesture, a smile?
This man is not defiled,
Just consistently misperceived...

And there is an warm anger that pulses within me,
At all who would brush him off,
At you who would push past, and walk on by,
Walking fast, looking anywhere but his eyes,
He's a man don't you realize this simplest fact?
And count your stars you were not born where, who, how, when, why he was...

There are moments when the apathetic ignorance, foolish persistence in ridiculous notions of superiority, Induces in me contempt of society of every rule you've created,
every boundary you've erected,
between yourself and the "lesser peoples" of this world

And if you identify yourself with these narcissistic patterns of taking your lucky standing for granted...
Know, I exist to undo your follies
Your conceptual supremacy will not last,
Living so fast, your mind so slow,
You will arrive, with nowhere to go.

And if you look upon me, now, with disgust or disdain,
at last I can stand certain,
Now now now I'm human again.

What I Have in Life?

Family
Body
Mind
Capoeira, Parkour
Quena
Questing for Spirituality
Connecting to people
Sky, Earth, Sun, Moon, Stars
Passion to help
Lust for life

90 children kidnapped, will be forced to kill others.

The kind of news you expect to hear about immediately right? I mean, if rebels "kidnapped two classrooms full of 5th and 6th graders..." and if "In the past six days, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes" we would hear about it immediately. No ifs, ands, or buts. This is the sort of thing America stands against, right?

Unless it happens in Uganda...

Take action: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2241/t/2220/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25999

Go further, educate yourself about the crisis in northern Uganda.
www.invisiblechildren.com
www.resolveuganda.org

Neurological Empathy

What neurological correlates exist with the experience of a true empathic connection? I can think of no functional or pragmatic manner to test this, but I would not be averse to believe that

Perhaps there is a physio-neurological correlate that may affect the expression of genes and the probability of certain predispositions to induce psychopathologies, in the truly empathic relationship. Perhaps this correlate is related to the brain's acknowledgment of the genuine existence of another.

I have found a good deal of research on the neurology of being empathic, but little on the actual experience of being currently engaged in the feeling of having somebody to empathize with you.

Is this related to neural circuits that serve to represent others as actual extensions of the physical/neurological self?

What is the function of circuits that identify the individual with other sentient (and non-sentient) beings?

Motives/Actions

So many things I feel that I learn, things that I cannot put into words... Like a spark of clarity illuminating a room, I can now find my through it, but lack the vocabulary to describe what I saw (as an effort to remind myself for future reference?)...

Or perhaps such epiphanies are the fruit of a process, and I cannot describe the taste of that fruit without first telling the tale of the process... (And the fruit of the process is really the most useless part, neh?)

So I sit, with the knowledge/assumption that it is not only of benefit, but the only benefit, to commit an action regardless of your motive. Your motive will shape to that action if it is repeated in mind or body, to varying degrees. It is not by thinking about charity or smiles that one becomes charitable or happy.

I lie. Perhaps the thought is a first step. But it is not, as a discreet entity, immediately prior to the (illusion of) discreet entity of happiness or charity.

What Am I To Do?

I perceive what I believe to be a mediocre existance
Steeped in insignificance
People pass I judge
They laugh I shrug
Are they an inconsiderate bunch or is this a mistaken hunch
As I stand waiting for lunch?
Pondering the notion of being subjected to an existential punch to my metaphysical guy
Mind lurching in a rut
Uncertainty restrains
Hesitate and refrain from submersion
Either/or has me
Unsure
What am I to do?

Does she?

Stories weaved tween specks in the sky
Looking up and asking who what where when why

What color are her eyes...
How sweetly resonate her lies?
Does she taste like the salted sea,
Skin like kalamata olives?
Does she speak in a tongue like "seni seviorum, je t'aime, te quiero, minha namorada?"
Does she fight for civil rights,
Does she stop at red lights
Or blazes past
Like a love that doesn't last?

How may passions can I contain
Love for life keeps me alive and sane
Dancing, fighting, eating, dreaming, loving, watching, swimming,
Run, skip, flip
Take a moment,
To take a sip
And I come back
To return to attack.

Mental Health Counseling

"It is as though he listened,
And such listening as his enfolds us in a silence
In which at last we begin to hear
What we are meant to be"

Carl Rogers translates Sun Tzu to describe the ideal therapist.

"I cannot live my life in abstractions. So real relationships with persons, hands dirtied in the soil, observing the budding of a flower, or viewing the sunset, are necessary to my life."

Carl Rogers on why abstract thought is only half the process.

"He who imposes himself has the small manifest might; he who does not impose himself has the great secret might."

Carl Rogers translates Lao Tzu, again to describe the methodology of the great therapist.

My classes have stimulated and invigorated my mind. I love this.

I have recently begun to try and grasp the theories of behaviorism and psychopathology. At one point, I would have disagreed with the tenets put forth by both of these. Behaviorism I have actually begun to reconcile with my own beliefs more recently. But psychopathology, the idea of diagnosing mental illnesses has rubbed me the wrong way for quite a while.

I am trying to elucidate a conceptualization I have recently come upon. An author of a textbook mentions that sanity and insanity are like night and day. We can clearly differentiate one from the other, but as we approach that buffer zone, distinctions become hazy. I feel that there is great significance in that region. This is so directly analogous to transitioning from particle-electron behavior to wave-electron behavior. Probabilities show up anywhere, but they still follow a statistical pattern.

Furthermore, I think we can apply this spectrum, at the center of which lies our hazy event horizon, to conceptualize cultural/universally human characteristics. We lie directly at the center, where we draw from both, but are still consistently both and neither...

Words are failing me. I need to come back to this.